If you’ve ever played with a wooden puzzle in your local educational toys store, you’ll instantly understand Interlocked, a new iOS game from developer Armor Games (Kingdom Rush). It’s a fun little universal puzzle app for the low price of $0.99, and it should keep you gently entertained for some time to come.

The concept here is to rotate each group of interlocked wooden pieces, sliding each piece out in the right order to fully disassemble the puzzle. Once you’ve moved all the pieces off and away from each other, you get a new puzzle to rotate and solve. It’s very zen, and the whole thing reminds me a bit of Zen Bound, another rotating puzzle game with wooden sculptures and a gentle vibe.

Interlocked supports the iPad retina display, too, and is compatible with the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, so it should work on any of the new iOS devices you might have. It’s got four chapters to beat, each with nine different puzzles to solve within. Each puzzle will award you stars based on your performance, speed, and number of moves. Complete a puzzle faster and in less moves, and you’ll get the full three stars for that particular puzzle. If you’re a Game Center fan, you’ll have 18 new acheivements to unlock playing this game.

With its gentle soundtrack, zen-like calm, and logical puzzles, Interlocked is bound to keep you taking apart wooden puzzles for hours on your iPhone or iPad. Head on over to the App Store to give it a try, and let us know what you think in the comments.

About the author

Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he'll really appreciate it.

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